How AI Features Work
MyPlot uses AI in three places: the weather insight widget, the weekly briefing, and plant library enrichment. Here's how each works and what to expect.
The three AI features
| Feature | What it does | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Weather insight | 1–2 sentences of plain weather prose for the week ahead | Dashboard weather widget |
| Weekly briefing | 4-section garden decision note based on your plantings and forecast | Dashboard briefing card + /briefings/ history |
| Plant library enrichment | Fills in days to maturity, spacing, companions, pests, harvest notes for plant profiles | Plant library detail pages |
Caching — why content doesn't change on every load
Weather insight
Cached 12 hours. On load: served instantly. After 12h: regenerates on next dashboard visit. "Regenerate" forces fresh generation now.
Weekly briefing
Cached 7 days. On load: served instantly. After 7 days: regenerates on next visit. "Regenerate" forces fresh now. All briefings saved permanently to history.
Plant library enrichment
Runs once, in the background, when a profile is created. Not triggered by user action. Result has a confidence score (0.0 – 1.0).
Confidence scores
Plant library data enriched by AI carries a confidence score from 0.0 to 1.0. A score of 0.9 means the AI is highly confident the data is accurate for that species. Scores below 0.7 are flagged with a caveat in the UI — treat them as a starting point, not authoritative data.
Human-curated data from trusted horticultural sources is never overwritten by AI output and takes precedence in all cases.
What data is sent to the AI
| Sent | Not sent |
|---|---|
| Your location name (e.g. "Cathcart") | Your full address or coordinates |
| Plant common names from your plantings | Your name or email |
| Weather forecast data (temperatures, rain) | Household member details |
| Current season and date | Harvest weights or event notes |
| Bed names | Any financial or personal data |
Privacy: No personally identifiable information is sent to the AI provider. The AI receives garden context — plant names, weather, location name — not your identity.
The AI model
MyPlot uses DeepSeek V4 Flash via OpenRouter for all AI generation. It's a fast, capable model well-suited to structured garden advice tasks. All AI output is clearly labelled in the app as AI-generated.
When AI gives vague advice
The quality of AI advice scales with your data. If the briefing is generic, it's usually because:
- You have few or no active plantings recorded
- Your property has no coordinates (no weather context)
- Plantings are recorded with vague names ("plant" instead of "Pak choy")
- Finished plants haven't been marked as finished (they dilute active context)
See also